William Woodward (May 1, 1859 – November 17, 1939) was a U.S. artist and educator, best known for his impressionist paintings of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States.

He undertook studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, newly established in response to the Philadelphia Exposition and based on the indivisible relationship of art to industry.

That year, he also extended his honeymoon through Scotland and England to include a three-month summer study at the Académie Julian in Paris.

He assimilated Impressionist tenets with his own style and ultimately developed a manner of artistic rendering suitable for capturing the soft light, moisture, and romantic essence of the French Quarter.

Allison Owen, Woodward's former student who continued architectural studies in Boston, supported passage of a city ordinance to establish the Cabildo as a museum.

One sees beyond the arches of the loggia into the greenery of the Square, the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, to the lower Pontalba Building and an outbuilding that no longer exists.

Among his students were the most respected practicing architects of the day: Richard Koch, Ernest Lee Jahncke, Edgar Stone, and Emile Weil, as well as Charles Bein, Frederick Duncan "Fritz" Parham, and Alvin Callender, the latter two who assisted Woodward in documenting the features and dimensions of the St. Louis Hotel while it was being demolished in 1917.

In 1938, he published French Quarter Etchings, reproducing fifty-four architectural views with annotations regarding history, renovation, and destruction of the structures.

[1] They had four children: While painting a mural for the United Fruit Company in New Orleans in 1921, Woodward fell off a scaffold and injured his spine, resulting in permanent paralysis of the legs.

Though confined to a wheelchair, Woodward remained active, and his retirement years were filled with prolific artwork, travel around the United States in a specially-equipped automobile, and his work as founder of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Art Association.